Mubarak to testify in Mursi retrial

Cairo: An Egyptian court has ordered former president Hosni Mubarak to give his testimony in the retrial of his now-deposed successor Mohammad Mursi in a mass prison escape during the 2011 uprising.

The order was made by the Cairo Criminal Court late Sunday scheduling Mubarak’s appearance for December 2.

The former president has rarely been seen in public since March 2017 when a top court cleared him of charges of involvement in killing hundreds of protesters during the 2011 revolt that forced him to resign.

His court showing will also mark Mubarak’s encounter with Mursi, an Islamist who was ousted by the army in mid-2013 following enormous protests against his rule.

There has been no comment from Mubarak, now aged 90, on the court order.

Mursi and 27 other defendants mostly from his now-outlawed Muslim Brotherhood are charged with orchestrating a mass jail escape during the chaos that followed the anti-Mubarak revolt. Some fugitives included members from Hamas and Iran-allied Hezbollah movement, who were imprisoned in Egypt at the time.

In June 2015, a criminal court sentenced Mursi and other co-defendants including the Brotherhood head Mohammad Badie to death in this case. In November 2016, the Court of Cassation, Egypt’s top appeals tribunal, overturned the verdicts and ordered a retrial that started in March.

On Sunday, the court heard in the same case a testimony from Mubarak’s interior minister Habib Al Adly, who accused the Brotherhood of collaborating with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, Hamas and Hezbollah in the mass prison escape as part of a pre-planned “conspiracy” to trigger chaos in Egypt and topple the Mubarak regime in 2011.

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